Avery Dennison Expands Its Monza 5 Tag Family

Three new tags join two existing models—all made with Impinj's Monza 5 chip—resulting in a lineup intended to provide greater versatility with a variety of sizes and, in some cases, longer read ranges.

Dec 10, 2012—Avery Dennison RFID has released three new ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags made with ImpinjMonza 5 chips. According to the company, this completes a portfolio of five UHF EPC Gen 2 passive RFID tags designed to be faster to encode than previous UHF tags, more sensitive for reading and writing, and available in a offer a variety of form factors.

Avery Dennison has been working with Impinj for years to develop inlays containing chips that meet users' changing needs, says George Dyche, Avery Dennison's director of RFID product-line management. The latest tags round out a line of tags intended to present greater versatility to a variety of market sectors, ranging from logistics to jewelry, in smaller sizes and greater sensitivity, using Impinj's year-old Monza 5 chip (see Impinj Launches Products to Speed Item-Level Encoding).

Avery Dennison's George Dyche

The latest additions are the AD-550m5 tag (for aviation and general-purpose supply chain applications), the 233m5 model (for item-level apparel tagging) and the 171m5 inlay (for tagging smaller items in the retail and health-care sectors). The three new tags were preceded by two other Avery Dennison inlays made with the Monza 5 chip: the AD-110m5 tag, released in December 2011 and designed for health-care applications, and the 227m5 general-purpose supply chain compliance tag, unveiled in September of this year.

Impinj and Avery Dennison RFID will describe details of the new tags at a webinar scheduled for Dec. 11 at 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST, titled New RFID Inlays Expand Tracking Application Possibilities. "Our purpose is to showcase the Monza 5 inlay family" that Avery Dennison has released, Dyche explains.

The AD 227m5 tag, a general-purpose band inlay measuring 3.77 inches by 0.33 inch, replaces the AD 223 version and offers greater read sensitivity than that model, as well as faster encoding due to the chip upgrade. The tag is being utilized for tracking large retail items, bagged or hanging apparel and boxed electronics.

The AD 550m5 tag targets the aviation market, for such use cases as airline baggage tagging and baggage transfer labels. The tag, measuring 1.5 inches by 2.99 inches, is a hybrid replacement for the AD 833 omni-directional tag and the AD 843 inlay, designed for use on a variety of materials, including metal. In the case of the 550m5 version, Dyche says, the inlay design removes the characteristic null zones of a typical dipole antenna, and also provides performance characteristics like an omni-directional antenna. In this way, he notes, it incorporates the functionality of both of its predecessors.